Since the writings of Tolkien, developed over the years into its own semi canon, the genre of fantasy has had its staples. It is so easy to suspend disbelief in a book that follows on from its predecessors. We accept that there are elves: who live for centuries, are light and lithe, powerful magic users, graceful and sharp-featured. Orcs and goblins are brutal, twisted creatures with grey or green skin, jaws like wild boars, and a knack for evil though not villainy.
The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson, is astounding because it is none of that. Indeed, its similarities to our world of Earth are as set in reality as a work of science fiction on an alien planet. Even that other epic series of fantasy, The Wheel of Time (also finished by Sanderson after Robert Jordan's untimely death), relied on staples we take for granted: trees, grass, weather.
In a chapter toward the end of the book, Sanderson remarks on this phenomenon as one of his side characters enters the land of Shin, where high mountains protect against the raging Highstorms that devastate the surrounding lands. Here, the character finds grass underfoot which does not draw into itself when touched; trees which do not move, but display their leaves in open defiance of the sky. It is a wonder, which is all the more wonderful since Sanderson has spent the rest of the book allowing his reader to become so involved in his world that we no longer recognise his strange world as surreal.
But Sanderson does not just play with the local flora and fauna (and even dogs are chitinous and insectoid). Novel ideas dominate his pages. My favourite, the 'spren': emotions taking form in physical bodies, appearing and disappearing due to unknown phenomena. Victorious armies create small golden gloryspren, festering wounds attract rottspren, windspren joy in trickery and dying people see deathspren. We even get a look at the perspective of a scientist of this world, who has made it his life to document all kind of spren in existence, from the fabled 'intoxicationspren' to a huge spren which rise up from the waters, guardian-spirit style, to draw something out of witnesses before sinking again beneath the waves. Even this scientist questions whether spren cause their associated emotions, or are caused by them. Do rottspren feed on rotting flesh? Why then can one protect a wound by washing it with water (which the rottspren abhor)? Do deathspren kill, or do they feed off of the last energies of a dying being?
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| Kaladin the truly Stormblessed |
Science, reasoning, logic and philosophy predominate through the pages. The main characters have depths beyond their clichéd surfaces. The slave is actually a surgeon, the warlord is a philosopher, the thief is a scientist. Atheism and religious zealotry war through the pages, each attempting to explain the meaning behind the greater tale. In fantasy, atheism is a little hard to explain when the gods are made flesh. Sanderson not only manages to create a convincing atheist, but also a convincing atheism. Is the Almighty real? Two very different solutions are drawn by the end of the book. I won't spoil any more than that though.
Only one thing is jarring in the reading of this book. Sanderson has followed an epic's path of changing his narrator each chapter. This is understandable. As a reader, it leaves one feeling eager to read on and find out what happened to the character left at a cliffhanger. Instead, the reader has to pass through another chapter with a different narrator, and is left just as hooked on that character's story by the end of that reading. This has been put to great use in novels for decades. The Wheel of Time made excellent use of this, once it had introduced the other characters from its main character's perspective. Over time and books, these characters had a chance for their own voices to grow. The Saga of Seven Suns played with this, allowing its readers to get attached to characters before snuffing them out (similarly with A Song of Ice and Fire). Sanderson's perspective characters, for the most part, never meet. Shallan (who is said to be the main view of the upcoming Book 2: Words of Radiance) is hinted at joining the others at the end of the book, but never does. Perhaps because of the lack of interaction of these characters, ending each chapter as he did, Sanderson left me feeling like I held the fraying end of the character's story each time. I wanted to keep reading but I felt cheated and frustrated each chapter, rather than eager as in the other epics above. I do not know if this was his intention. Given that this inspired just as many emotions in me as the others did however, this is hardly a criticism of the author's structuring style.
It is easy to create a book in which everything goes right, but so much harder to twist the heartstrings when things go wrong. In each book I have loved there is always a memorable point: a point that, in a sense, makes the book worth having read. Those points are always the lowest or the darkest for me. Sometimes (as in The Knife of Never Letting Go) that is the killing of a loved character, or the point where everything seems on the brink of disaster (such as Rand's ascent to Dragonmount in The Gathering Storm). In The Way of Kings, it was far more Lovecraftian in its unexplainable horror. Shallan, a character able to memorize a scene instantly and then draw it, discovers that she is surrounded by tall robed figures with shifting geometric symbols where they should have heads. Only, they only appear in her drawings and no others can see them. She thinks herself gone mad and begins sketching frantically to see if they are real. The defining moment comes when she sketches one reaching out for her and then she reaches out to see if it is real or merely a hallucination. She touches something. And there I got chills. These creatures are everything that Doctor Who tried to do with 'the Silence' (creatures you forget when you no longer see them) and failed to achieve that feeling of horror. That moment made the book worth reading for me.
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| Skyeels are a favourite of mine. |
This short review hasn't even touched on a number of things included in the book.
Like how each Act of the story is broken up into blocks, with interludes of perspectives from characters who are never mentioned again. Or how each chapter is fronted with a saying, history, or recording of last words, the latter of which's importance is only realised in one of the concluding chapters. Or even of the beautiful sketched artwork detailing the creatures of this land, which really absorb the reader into it. Not to mention the idea of glowing gemstone money, gemhearts or shardblades. It would take as long as the book to sum up why I enjoyed Sanderson's work so much, so I'll leave off by just saying: do yourself a favour and read it.
The Ups: A truly unique fantasy world, with deep characters and so much thought put into motives, world-crafting, and the results of each character's actions.
The Downs: Frustrating when the action moves away from one perspective character to another. Not done as smoothly or as coherently as I could have hoped. A little long-winded in parts.
The Verdict: 4.5 bookspren out of 5
Overall, the book is beautifully written, giving hints at its greater meaning and then dashing them at the next chapter. Sanderson is creating a masterwork here, and I can hardly wait for the second.
